“Let the woman learn in silence … I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
(1 Tim 2:11-12, KJV)
Take outside of its context, this statement made by Paul is a weapon with which women are often permanently silenced in their spiritual functioning. In the last teaching we however clearly saw the context in which that statement was made. In fact, when we read the verse correctly we see that Paul actually says the opposite. He emphasises – Let women thus be quiet to learn what the true knowledge is, whose Name is Jesus Christ. In the light of Gnosticism’s elevation of the hidden, mystic knowledge that women apparently possess, he suggests that for the time being they should not teach. From his argument it becomes clear that in his time women were indeed allowed to teach the congregation.
Charles Trombey, in his excellent Scripturally-based book Who said women can’t teach?, sketches the following historical context as introduction to the situation in Ephesus in which the letter to Timothy was addressed. His aim was “that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk” (1 Tim 1:3,4 & 6). “They deluded, deceived, untaught women, believing they possessed a special kind of hidden knowledge, taught doctrines based on myth, speculation and fables. A century or two later the Church Fathers explained these errors and named some of their leaders, including certain women. Hippolytus (third century) said: ‘They magnify these wretched women above the Apostles … so that some of them presume to assert that there is in them something superior to Christ.’” (p. 168).
The second part of the earlier quote again causes a certain inaccurate understanding of the Scripture, an almost illegal way of understanding the law (1 Tim 1:7-9). The verb phrase “usurp authority” is only used in Scripture in this one instance. In the run-up to the statement made above, Paul follows an extensive argument which we need to retrace.
The letter starts with the statements that Paul is bringing to Timothy “the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1:11) – in later teachings we shall further explain this as the gospel of the third dimension – and that the deceptions of Gnosticism were countering what various teachers of that time were propagating (1:19-20). In chapter 2 Paul then presents the foundations of this glorious gospel which Gnosticism opposed. Where Gnosticism throughout lays emphasis on the knowledge of the initiated, Paul emphasises the fact that it is a gospel which is offered to everyone. Verse 1 makes it clear – pray for all people. In verse 4 – God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”. Take note – they must come to the knowledge (epignosis = “precise and correct knowledge”, “full discernment”) of the truth (=Jesus the Christ = John 14:6). Directly following this Paul, in 1 Tim 2:5 arrives at the indelible truth that there is no other Mediator other than Christ Jesus, in one sweep rendering moot the possibility of Gnostic mediators – “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.”
The next point of his argument seems strange at first – “I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.” (verse 8). Within this statement a crucially important teaching is imbedded. Ps 134:1-2 proclaims – “Behold, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who by night stand in the house of the Lord! Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord.” In the Old Covenant the sanctuary was where the altar was (Ps 26:6), in the house of the Lord. But now, Paul states, the dispensation has arrived where land and buildings aren’t really considered holy anymore, as God no longer resides in temples/churches/cathedrals made by human hands (Acts 7:48; 17:24), but is now everywhere. This is what Jesus was trying to explain to the Samaritan woman in John 4:20-22 – ” ‘Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know, we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.’ ”
In accordance with Gnosticism (and its contemporary garb, the New Age), certain spaces are still seen as sacred spaces, where the border between the physical and spiritual realms are so thinly wrought that an osmosis-type exchange takes place (as a professor in Theology at a local Reformed theological school poetically suggested). This is however in no way true. The final straw which led to Jesus being crucified, was the fact that He was so audacious as to suggest that if the temple and altar as space of worship, the prime example of a holy space, was to be destroyed in three days, He could rebuild it in three days (John 2:19). Through this statement he spelled out the new dispensation on earth – that God would come to live with/in people (John 2:20; John 1:14; Isa 7:14).
When Paul then extends his argument and states that “I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”, he emphasises the Gnostic (and Jewish) understanding that God would only manifest himself in certain spaces. Then, again a strange way of equating things, in verse 9 and 10 he goes on to speak about women – “In like manner, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefastness and sobriety; not with braided hair, and gold or pearls or costly raiment; but (which becometh women professing godliness) through good works.” How can women clothe themselves IN THE SAME MANNER as men who raise their holy hands? This is a very strange equating of disparate elements. The word hosautos translates as “in like manner” or “likewise”, and clearly points back to the previous statement about men.
To correctly understand this we need to understand that Ephesus and Corinth were, at the time of the writing of this letter, pagan cities, “Gnostic heresy was rampant … Greek and Egyptian influences embedded heathen practices within the Christian services … Prostitution was a hallowed institution. Excessive perversion existed in their non-Christian world and lifestyle as a form of worship. Extremes in cross dressing, ecstatic worship, clamor, and hallucination had been the norm … These Ephesian women whom Timothy was sheparding were following the then current fad of dressing like the goddess Diana, who had her skirt tucked up, around her waist. Nudity and sexuality had been the previous forms of worship for many of these new converts … Furthermore, there were Gnostics at Ephesus who enticed their male students with sexual overtures. Such groups accepted sexual license as Christian behavior. The city was renowned for the shrine of Diana and its thousands of temple prostitutes.” (Kelly Varner: The Three Prejudices, pp. 98, 94-95 & 97).
In this light it becomes clearer – Paul very specifically confronts the Gnostic elements in the women of that time. These women (who through the pagan tradition had taught men in various ways), now, like the men, had to learn that their bodies were their temples, and that they had to be clothed with Christ, as He had stated it in Rom 13:14 – “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.” In the original Greek the phrase ‘to usurp authority” had clear undertones of domination through erotic exposure, and in the above-mentioned context it is clear that Paul’s veto was specifically aimed at putting a stop to these events in Ephesus. It is clearly not a universal spiritual law which is applicable to the universal Christian fellowship of faith.
- Sela: Realize this important hermeneutic principle: the general explains the specific.
- Read:Num4-9
- Examine how this has been fulfilled: Num 6:2-3 (Tip: 1 Pet 1:15-16; Matt 11:19; John 15; 1 Cor 11:25; 1 Tim 5:23).
